CALL FOR PAPERS

Presentation

The phenomena of massive open online courses has had made a significant impact on the higher education landscape worldwide. It has been a major driver for learning innovation, helping disseminate open educational practices and online learning. According to Class Central, a total of over 80 million learners have participated in MOOCs in 2017 and 20 million new learners sign up for the first time. This represents a steady increase from the previous year, meaning the movement is continuously growing, opposite to earlier belief. To date, over 800 universities around the world have launched at least one MOOC. This phenomenon has generated an important new trend in online education which brings major challenges for policy, research, pedagogy, technology and institutional organization.
The MOOC-Maker Global Symposium – MOOC Lx18 aims at presenting a state of the art of the MOOC phenomena. It will be a platform for sharing results from ongoing research and discussing institutional experiences, focusing on particular in Europe and Latin America. We invite researchers, technologists, course designers and learners from universities, public administration, ONGs and industry to share their approaches and perspectives on key topics, including learning design, accessibility, learning support and personalisation, analytics, assessment, gamification and badges, open licensing, certification, and quality standards.
The event is organized by the MOOC-Maker consortium in the framework of the 30th anniversary celebrations of Universidade Aberta, the open university of Portugal, with the collaboration of the MOOQ project. The MOOC-Maker consortium is composed of by nine Higher Education Institutions from Europe and Latin America and the MOOQ partnership involves five European universities and public agencies. The two initiatives are co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme – European Union.

Topic of Interest

  • Learning Design for MOOCs
  • Pedagogical issues, tutoring roles and human interaction in MOOCs development
  • Universal Design and Accessibility issues in MOOCs contents and platforms
  • Learning analytics
  • Use of Artificial Intelligence for personalisation
  • Multilingualism and cultural adaptation issues
  • Gamification and Social Learning Artefacts
  • Open badges and new assessment approaches and technologies
  • Data protection and open licensing
  • Experiences and best practices in implementing MOOCs
  • Attrition and retention in MOOCs
  • Reuse and remix of MOOCs
  • Quality standards for open education and MOOCs

Submissions

We invite contributions in English, Spanish or Portuguese in the following categories:

  • Research and Experience extended papers (up to 12 pages)
  • Work in Progress (Research and Experience) short papers (up to 6 pages).

Important Dates

  • Submission of abstracts – April 6, 2018
  • Notification of acceptance – April 10, 2018
  • Conference dates: April 16-17, 2017

Submission: Proposals will be submitted by Email to the conference chair: Antonio.Teixeira@uab.pt.

Participation

Participation is free of charge, although subject to registration.
Registration in the Symposium can be done using the dedicated tool in the website or by sending an email to deed@uab.pt.

Publication

Papers presented at the MOOC-Maker Symposium will be published in the following journals: EURODL (European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning), IRRODL (The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning), and RE@D. These submissions would be then subject to a standard peer-review process to be conducted by the journals in accordance to the publication procedures.
Alternatively, authors of papers who do not want to get an extended version peer-reviewed and published may submit their paper for publication to the non-refereed Brief Items section of EURODL.
Abstracts of the papers will be published in advance on the Symposium website.

Language

English is the official conference language. A special track for papers in Spanish and Portuguese is available for the Symposium.

Venue

Cultural Centre of Belém (Praça do Império, 1449-003 Lisboa, Portugal – see Google maps). Located between Jerónimos Monastery and Belém Tower, the CCB Conference Centre is a unique space (visit venue website).

Symposium Chairs

Antonio Moreira Teixeira, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.
Rocael Hernández Rizzardini, Galileo University, Guatemala.

Research Track Chairs

Carlos Alario-Hoyos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.
Timothy Read, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain.

Experience Track Chairs

Darco Jansen, European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, The Netherlands.
Lina Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.

Workshop Chair

Christian Stracke, Open Universiteit Netherlands, The Netherlands.

Organizing Committee

Maria do Carmo Teixeira Pinto
João Paz
Pedro Cabral
José Mota
Virgínia Zaidam
Isabel Ribeiro
Maria Virgínia Couceiro